Happy Hours:The My Little Pony Killer: No, they hate us because we bomb the bajeezus out of them, and you know what? I don't blame them one little bit.

When was the last time we bombed Iran? Or Syria? Or Jordan?

It's not just bombs. It's called imperialism. When Iran started having "democratic elections", we had to set them straight and install the Shah. We support brutal dictators so we can keep the tap turned on from those oil fields. We do this all at the expense of the people.

America and Britain carved up the former Ottoman Empire because they wanted all the oil. So they put in corrupt dictators and armed radicals. Now after generations the people want nothing to do with the western powers, but said powers continue to butt in and dictate policy. They hate you because your oil money corrupts their countries and causes such huge poverty and ignorance of the population.

Over half a centuries worth of military intervention in the region creating a large distrust among the population may have had something to do with it. Of course, low education rates mixed with leaders who are willing to exploit and flame those fears has a lot to do with it as well. But to say we have done absolutely nothing to deserve it is absurd

FarkedOver:Frankly, I'm surprised central and southern american countries don't hate us with more passion. The U.S. has been farking with them for as long as we've been a nation.

Everything comes down to money. Most of them make their living selling us stuff (food, mainly). Those that don't depend on the US for money (aka, Venezuala due to their oil) can afford to be more flexible with their foreign policy

Lost Thought 00:FarkedOver: Frankly, I'm surprised central and southern american countries don't hate us with more passion. The U.S. has been farking with them for as long as we've been a nation.

Everything comes down to money. Most of them make their living selling us stuff (food, mainly). Those that don't depend on the US for money (aka, Venezuala due to their oil) can afford to be more flexible with their foreign policy

I understand that, but when you have top US officials saying things like:

"I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go communist due to the irresponsibility of its people. The issues are much too important for the Chilean voters to be left to decide for themselves."

How much more anti-american can we be? We've been selling out our beliefs forever. This country isn't in the business of spreading democracy or freedom and it never has been.

They hate us because they don't understand us seems more accurate to me.

Like this stupid movie. I don't think the average Muslim has any idea that most of the people here not only never heard of this movie until all this shiat happened, but that we never even WOULD have, nor would we have cared or been interested in that piece of garbage. Or that it is really easy for any idiot to make a "movie" but that doesn't mean it is show in theatres or given any attention by 99.9% of the country. And it certainly doesn't speak for us, or our government.

Never mind trying to get into the complexities of states and how they work in this country -- that you can drive across even a single state and feel like you're in a different country, never mind going a few states north or south or east or west. My ex laughed his ass off at the "culture shock" of taking my NY-born, living in NY or CT my whole life, to North Carolina for the first time. I'd never really been outside major Northeast cities like Boston, Philadelphia, DC, and only as far south as Richmond, VA. It was like a whole other word.

I think that is the biggest problem. Snippets and samples don't explain this country. Volumes of books would barely explain this country. And unfortunately, many times, the biggest idiots get the most attention, making it look as if they speak for this country when they very much so do NOT.

They don't really hate us at all, they hate the image of us they have created. I've seen several Muslims comment on articles about the protests, and a common statement is some variation of "if America can punish people for insulting other religions, especially Judaism, these people should be punished for insulting Islam." Never mind that this statement is basically delusional, never mind the fact that we have neo-Nazis in this country who openly call for another Holocaust against the Jews and nothing is done to them as long as it remains just talk. They hate an imaginary America, very much like the teahadists hate an imaginary (invisible, seated) Obama who wants to put all conservatives in FEMA camps and institute Sharia law. There's a whole lot of stupid out there these days.

Meh, they don't hate us for our freedoms. They hate us because they are jealous and embarrassed. Muslims are supposedly god's chosen people, but hey they mostly live in 3rd world shiat holes and are farking poor compared to Americans.

Colonialism, tribalism, a difficult natural environment, probably lots of other reasons, some of them the fault of Africans and some of them caused by greedy foreigners. Now a million people can be slaughtered in the Sudan and people in the west basically don't give a shiat, and if they didn't have oil that's exactly how things would be in the Middle East.

intelligent comment below:America and Britain carved up the former Ottoman Empire because they wanted all the oil. So they put in corrupt dictators and armed radicals. Now after generations the people want nothing to do with the western powers, but said powers continue to butt in and dictate policy. They hate you because your oil money corrupts their countries and causes such huge poverty and ignorance of the population.

As someone who grew up in the Middle East the daughter of a US diplomat (who was an Arabist), in several countries carved up from the former Ottoman Empire, I think that we should really stop invoking all of that stuff. There's really got to be a point in time at which we can draw the line and say "let's just deal with events and politics from this historical point onward". It would eliminate a lot of worthless blather and name-calling and finger-pointing, not to mention the fact that the median age in most of those countries is extremely young, and most of those young men who are rioting don't even have grandparents who are old enough to remember much before the 1960s. Much of what they're taught about interference is inflammatory propaganda by parties that have their own nefarious agendas. Not all "indigenous" political beliefs are benign.

The Middle East has had more than enough home-grown nationalistic heroes in every country since they were oppressed by the Ottomans and the colonial powers, like Gamal Abdul Nasser and Ahmen Ben Bella, to name just a few. And there have been a lot of sympathetic Westerners since Napoleon rode into Egypt at the beginning of the 19th century and ordered his soldiers to treat the Egyptians and their religion with respect, certainly with more respect than they had been treated by their Ottoman overlords.

There's really no way to not butt in and interfere, unless you're dealing with a completely closed society like Shogun Japan. Any form of diplomacy is, by its very nature, interference.

The difference between Romney's supporters and Obama's 47% is that Romney's supporters just want to be left alone. They actually don't have a problem handing over their money to buy peace, but 45 years of doing so has not brought it and it has become obvious that it never will. Not only does Obama's 47% want every last dime of Romney's supporters, they want to kill them as well. But Romney's supporters are clearly all elitist racists and deserve what's coming to them.

That's the crucial difference between America and Sweden. When a rich Swede signs his tax bill, he doesn't worry if he's paying to raise the kids that will murder his children.

For fark's sakes, just replace every body else on Morning Joe with Niall Ferguson, dress them both in British military garb from back in the day, and make the show a 3+ hour extravaganza of them pissing and moaning about how those savages in the desert can't act in proper society and would be better colonized by clean, white Christians who know how the world works.

beta_plus:The difference between Romney's supporters and Obama's 47% is that Romney's supporters just want to be left alone. They actually don't have a problem handing over their money to buy peace, but 45 years of doing so has not brought it and it has become obvious that it never will. Not only does Obama's 47% want every last dime of Romney's supporters, they want to kill them as well. But Romney's supporters are clearly all elitist racists and deserve what's coming to them.

That's the crucial difference between America and Sweden. When a rich Swede signs his tax bill, he doesn't worry if he's paying to raise the kids that will murder his children.

I think you're in the wrong thread. Also you might want to get that prolapsed rectum checked out, it's probably causing all that butthurt.

I'll quote David Cross on this: "If the terrorists really hated us for our freedom, the Netherlands would be farking dust by now."

No, they probably hate us more for propping up sleazy, repressive governments to keep oil flowing to us, for our refusal to aim even the mildest criticism at Israel as we give them billions in aid, and many other factors. Our "freedom" is way down the list.

coeyagi:10) We made The Jewel of the Nile depicting Muslims / Danny Devito as buffoons.

That pretty much falls under the disrespect category. You would think they would give us a pass considering how we've put out all those great "mummy" movies where the mummy is a real bad-ass, but nooooo.

intelligent comment below:America and Britain carved up the former Ottoman Empire because they wanted all the oil. So they put in corrupt dictators and armed radicals. Now after generations the people want nothing to do with the western powers, but said powers continue to butt in and dictate policy. They hate you because your oil money corrupts their countries and causes such huge poverty and ignorance of the population.

The fact that cultural progress in the middle east practically ceased in the 8th century should be considered as well. Ain't religion great?

Not for actual discernible and understandable reasons that we can possibly work with but "just because"?

Not for supporting the Shah's reign of terror and torture for decades, not for the torture scandals in Abu Ghraib and elsewhere, not forthe drone attacks, America's unconditional support of Israel but just because.

There are people in the Muslim world who will always hate us for not following their religious and cultural guidelines and tempting their fellow Muslims to behave in a similar manner. There are people in the Muslim world who genuinely do believe that democracy and personal autonomy should replace traditional customs and see America's system (maybe not culture, but its framework) as a model to base their own on someday. These two groups are infinitesimal compared to the Muslim population that doesn't really have any more personal investment in America than the average American has in Canada. Our behavior and how effective the people in those two groups are at spinning news of our behavior is what determines how the general populace of these countries view us.

There are all sorts of wrinkles to this (like the leadership of these countries and how effective their media control is) but we are able to affect how many people in the region are pissed at us to some degree.

Happy Hours:The My Little Pony Killer: No, they hate us because we bomb the bajeezus out of them, and you know what? I don't blame them one little bit.

When was the last time we bombed Iran? Or Syria? Or Jordan?

Remember the hundred years war? Where the Angivens and the Plentagenets set forth on a course of war between two landed dynasties which raged across two sovereign nations for a net total of over 80 years, primarily as a result of an attempt by the English crown to press titles in France and France's reaction of attempting to usurp the English wool market?

Seem kind of ... weird to you? Like "that doesn't sound like the way the world works today." weird? It wasn't even king v king. It was like... proxy wars between local duchies fought as skirmishes. It was like some kind of royal slapfight that dragged thousands of people to their graves over sleights those newly dead couldn't even comprehend.

The point is, not every place in every time views foreign policy through the same lens. Some people see themselves first by something other than their nationality. It's important to remember these kind of dynamics when you rattle sabers and generically shiat on a region. "Who are these people and how are they organized?" is usually a good question to ask before you drop a bomb on them.